


believe in solid skies and slate-blue earth below

by spacenarwhal



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Miscarriage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: The doctor holds her up for Jemma to see: a squirming collection of spindly limbs covered in red-purple smears of grease-like blood. And Jemma, who knows the world best in atoms and cells, data and facts, looks at her, their daughter, equal parts her and Leo, a singular collection of their genetic material come together, and sees her exactly as she is. A miracle.





	believe in solid skies and slate-blue earth below

**Author's Note:**

> Beware friends there's real vague allusions to the most recent developments on AoS in this fic, though nothing too explicit. Just so you know in case you're avoiding those.

Their daughter is born in the small hours of the morning, when the sky outside the window is still a deep, guarded shade of black (the color of Kevlar and gun-metal and lab gloves). 

Jemma holds her breath and pushes through the haze of exhaustion, hours of active labor bearing down on her shoulders, her aching back, her throbbing body. Fitz’s shaking hand squeezes at her knee. His syllables all run together in her ear, trip and stumble over one another as they do whenever he gets overly excited or nervous or tired. The doctor offered him a chair a while ago, when his hand first began to spasm on her shoulder, but he refused, fixed on the idea of coaching her through it just like they’d practiced (at classes and at home, both of them determined to see things done right, though no amount of practice could ever have prepared them for this. Jemma knows that now).

Jemma wanted so badly to do this right, to prepare and guard herself with facts, with science. It’s what has gotten her through the hardest of times, across galaxies and through future dimensions, what reassured her on the ocean floor, as comforting as Fitz’s presence at her side. Still the intensity of the emotion coursing through her alongside the pain takes her by surprise, the strength of the frustration and terror and fascinating joy Jemma feels as she seals her hand over Fitz’s shaking fingers choking the air in her lungs.

Jemma inhales down to her belly and pushes through hours of fatigue and pain and fear, pushes and pushes and gasps when she feels it, feels her body stretch and expand as the baby leaves her at long last. 

The doctor holds her up for Jemma to see: a squirming collection of spindly limbs covered in red-purple smears of grease-like blood. And Jemma, who knows the world best in atoms and cells, data and facts, looks at her, their daughter, equal parts her and Leo, a singular collection of their genetic material come together, and sees her exactly as she is. A miracle.

-

The facts, as they stand, are these: Fitz is terrified. 

The baby is small and pink and fuzzy. Furry almost. Her resemblance to a monkey is more than a little astonishing. When he tells Jemma as much she rolls her eyes, more asleep than awake. “Always the charmer Fitz.” 

She weighs in at a health 3.35 kilograms, measures a solid 50.8 centimeters in length. She has ten fingers she keeps curled into fists and ten toes that fold forward, scrunched towards the soft pink soles of her wrinkled feet. Her navel is still predominantly umbilical cord and her chest rises and falls with every breath she takes. He tries to count them at first, wonders at all the breaths she’s taken since that first rattling cry, all the breaths that will follow. He’s seen the future and rewritten time, helped mend interdimensional rifts between universes, and still nothing has ever felt so much an indecipherable mystery to unlock as all the potential she carries in her tiny body.

She makes little sounds every now and again, her breathing a raspy whisper broken up by the occasional snuffle. It reminds Fitz of his grandmother’s dog. (He should really stop comparing his child to animals. Probably.)

The baby dozes in her tiny plastic cot that the nurses wheeled her back into the room in after they cleaned her, tiny yellow hat on her lumpy bald head, swaddled in the blanket his mum made for her, fuzzy soft fleece covered in monkeys, completely unaware of her father’s ruminations.

(Fitz has practiced and practiced and practiced for months, has perfected his time on swaddling, diaper changes, and swapping out onesies. Fitz practiced with steady hands and shaking hands, practiced the motions until they were ingrained into the muscles of his hands, all the while ignoring the wisps of dread that tired to slow him down). 

He glances back at Jemma, mouth open to say something--thank you, maybe, thank you feels right. Thank you for everything, thank you for loving me, for forgiving me, him. Thank you for hoping and knowing we could have this when I lost faith--and finds her asleep. She’s still propped half upright by pillows, the bed still slightly elevated from when she tried breastfeeding, her hair falling out of the quick, choppy plait Daisy had made for her before the doctor had asked visitors to clear out. He rises, walks as quietly as he can over to Jemma, fixes the blankets and pulls closed the sides of the old cardigan Jemma took from his side of the closet ages ago, back before she even stopped fitting into her own. She stirs a little, eyes slit open for a brief second. “Fitz.” She breathes, and he smiles, kisses her forehead, strokes over her cheek.

“We have a baby.” He says, and that isn’t what he meant to say but Jemma exhales, a short shaky laugh, knocks her head against his chin. “Yes Fitz, a baby.” She agrees, and Fitz cups her head, rests his cheek against the crown of her hair. 

“She’s perfect, Jem.” Fitz says, because it’s true, “Just like her mum.” And that’s the greatest truth there is, as indisputable as the laws of thermodynamics. 

“Oh Fitz.” Jemma sighs, barely more than a whisper. 

Standing there, holding her, the baby sleeping within his line of sight, the fear doesn’t feel anywhere as strong as sun-bright happiness rising inside him. 

-

Margaret Fitz-Simmons is welcomed home by a hastily painted banner (Daisy’s doing), a refrigerator of pre-made meals (Coulson’s contribution), and a house full of mismatched people without a drop of blood between them who consider her family. 

It’s a different type of gathering, less tense than their team-ups of old, no world-saving to be done, just a celebration of new life, growth, an ordinary milestone that somehow feels like one of the most impossible things they’ve ever shared. 

“She’s so small.” Daisy says, peaking into the bundle of blankets hoisted in Coulson’s arms. Jemma laughs, still tired, but soft with warmth and worry, watching as her daughter gets passed from well-wisher to the next. “She didn’t feel small coming out.” 

Daisy wrinkles her nose, “Ouch and also, ew.” 

“Hardly the worst we’ve ever shared.” Jemma chides, unbothered by basics of biology. “I’ve literally touched your internal organs.” 

Behind her Hunter winces. “Well, there’s a picture for you.” Bobbi slaps him across the back of his neck. Daisy flips him off. 

Jemma accepts the cup of tea Mack brings her and the seat nearby, watches Elena carefully touch the peak of Margaret’s nose with a metal fingertip. Fitz and Mack perfected the nano-tech necessary for the synthetic nerve fibers over a year ago, but Jemma still watches every micro-expression that flickers over Elena’s face as she touches Margaret’s face. 

“She’s beautiful.” Elena says, eyes damp, _“Una maravilla.”_

“We’re looking at the future head of Shield R&D, mark my words.” Coulson says, words round with pride. He smiles at Jemma, who flushes under the praise, even if her heart pinpricks with something like apprehension. She remembers the terrible cold of a future erased. Remembers the fragments of stories she heard. “She’s a bit young for that still, sir. Her interests might very well veer in a completely different direction. She might want to be ballerina.”

(Jemma had dreamed of stars and planets for nearly a year, had been sure her future lied in the sky. Just never in the way it actually was.)

Coulson nods, turns his smile back to Margaret still snoozing in his arms. “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll buy her however many tutus she wants.”

Jemma laughs, the knot of apprehension loosening enough for her to raise her cup of tea and take a sip. Whatever future she saw, the future she heard of, is gone now. She knows it beyond a shadow of a doubt. She imagines Margaret years from now, wearing tulle and pointe shoes, ribbons in her hair. Soft and pink and happy on a thriving green world. She thinks of a daughter who grew up in a cold dark place, hard and bitter, a girl she’ll never know now who grew into a woman she never met, and a part of her aches for her still. 

-

May holds Margaret in her arms with the same ease with which Fitz has seen her hold every weapon she’s ever touched, but the usual steadiness of her features has softened into calm. May notices Fitz watching, has probably known he was there from the moment he stopped in the doorway, turns towards him with Margaret held against her chest. 

“Margaret, huh?” She asks, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth, her dark eyes gentle and warm. 

Fitz worries his ear, an old habit that made a reappearance during the final months of Jemma’s pregnancy. “Yeah, we--uh--we thought it was nice.” They’d talked about so many possibilities. There are many people to honor, to remember, but there was no way of picking just one. Margaret felt like the best alternative to giving her a dozen names, a nod the the organization that put them together, changed the course of their lives irrevocably. 

They’d purposefully never asked Deke what his mother’s name was. They couldn’t, not when they were going about the business of undoing the very future in which she existed. Even when Jemma had confirmed she was pregnant she’d kept reminding him that there was no knowing that the baby wouldn’t be a boy. “Time can be rewritten.” She’d said softly, because the world was undeniably still turning on its axis, a single whole, and there was no way of knowing what would come next, every variable uncertain. 

“It suits her.” May says, eyes on the baby’s face. Margaret’s awake now, her brown open and peering unfocused at the room around her. Fitz can’t understand how she’s managed to go without crying yet. A part of him wants to cry, overwhelmed as he feels by the enormity of everything that’s happened since Jemma sat up in bed and said the baby was definitely coming, and he’s been in the world a lot longer than 72 hours. 

“Thank you.” Fitz says, immediately feeling foolish for responding. He’d thought, though he’d never mentioned the idea to Jemma, of naming the baby Deke if it had been a boy, but it had never felt right, almost as though Fitz were trying to replace the grandson they’d lost with someone new. 

(They buried him by the ocean on a green hillside, under a massive tree, marked the spot with a stone engraved with his name. They never learned his birthdate so there was little more they could add. The inadequacy of the gesture weighed heavily on them for months afterward, even as the grief ebbed away. He’d even up his life, in every sense of the term, to ensure the planet’s survival. Fitz still visits on his own sometimes, sits besides Deke’s final resting place and explains everything that comes to mind. Oceans. Trees. Football. Things he wishes he’d had the patience and time to explain properly before.)

Margaret whimpers gently, fidgets in May’s hold. Fitz comes closer, lip worried between his teeth, heart accelerating at the sound of Margaret upset. “Oh--is she--does she need--”

“Shush.” May whispers, rubbing at Margaret’s back with the flat of her palm. “Shush, it’s alright. I’ve got you.” 

“She might need a change.” Fitz says, one hand partially raised though he doesn’t mean to take her from May. 

“No she’s okay still.” May responds softly, still rubbing Margaret’s back. Fitz watches on astonished as Margaret goes quiet under May’s touch, until her breathing evens again and she drops into a doze. 

“You’ve got to teach me that.” Fitz breathes, afraid all over again of what they’ll do once everyone goes. What will they do--what will he do--when Margaret starts to cry in earnest and there’s no help to be had. 

(Fitz is capable of terrible things for love, but a baby doesn’t need venage or fury, doesn’t require cunning calculations or brutal sacrifice. What if, Fitz worries still, what if he proves incapable of providing what she needs.) 

“Sure thing.” May answers, motioning him closer with a tilt of her head. Margaret fusses when May passes her over and panick flares in Fitz’s chest as he cradles her close, tries to mimic May’s posture.

“Breathe, Fitz.” May chides him softly, one hand squeezing his elbow. “Just relax. They can smell fear.” She jokes in her usual deadpanned manner, mouth twitching in a brief smile. She takes Fitz’s hand in his, adjust his hold the way she did when she taught him how to shoot years and years (lifetimes) ago. May covers his hand, rests it carefully across Margaret’s back. The warmth of her palm seeps into his hand as she guides him through the movement.

-

Jemma wakes with a start, fingers curled into an aching fist, ready for a fight that isn’t taking place. Not anymore. Cold rolls through her in waves, spreads up her chest and down her back, makes her sleep-stale mouth go dry with worry. Her throat feels swollen and she drags a deep breath against the sensation of choking, holds it for a count of five and breathes out. She remembers former sessions with therapists, counts to five and takes note of her surroundings, the sight of the sun streaming across the ceiling, the smell of talcum powder, the sound of birds outside, the scratchy-warmth of the throw blanket over her feet, and salt on the tip of her tongue. She breathes deep, tries to ease away the fear that lingers after the dream like she does a dressing from a wound. 

Beside her Leo sleeps on, mouth slightly agape, each inhale curling onto itself in a snore, his hand resting against her side. His face is soft and Jemma hopes that his own dreams are kinder than her own.

(She dreamt of Deke, his boyish grin that reminded her so much of Fitz at the Academy, the way curiosity lit his face like a flood light whenever he discovered something knew. There is so much Jemma will never know about him, so much she never had the chance to learn. That last day, running towards the impossible chance at altering the flow of time, he’d looked at them and said, “I always wanted to help my parents save the world. Guess this is almost as good.” And then he’d run, just ahead of them as they threw themselves into the fray. It wasn’t until later that they found him, lying immobile among the wreckage of the fight.)

Jemma stretches, works the kinks out of her lower back, tries to loosen the tightness in her hips and upper thighs, still groggy from irregular sleep and the after-exhaustion of giving birth. Fitz groans under his breath, rolls on his back, pets the bed beside him as though searching for her. He scrunches his face in a yawn. “God, what time is it?” 

Jemma peaks at her watch, bites back a yawn of her own. “Just after two.”

“Maggie still asleep?” Fitz asks, sitting upright, grinding his palm into his eye. Jemma turns her head towards the cot set up in the corner of their room. Down the hall there’s a lovely nursery Jemma’s mum helped her decorate, fitted with everything a baby might want and new parents might need but they haven’t been able to leave Maggie alone there since bringing her home from hospital. Even with the retrofitted baby monitors Daisy rigged up for them, the nursery feels so very far away.

“Looks like the little monkey is still out.” Jemma replies softly. 

Fitz yawns again, reaches for his phone. He fiddles with it for a second, grinning boardly when he announces. “If she sleeps for another twenty-three minutes it’ll be a new record for this time of day.”

Jemma grins back, closing her eyes briefly. Daisy had joked they’d keep lab notes instead of baby books.

“I feel like I could sleep for another year, but I’m starving.” Jemma says and Fitz taps his phone again, drops it on the bed. 

“And what is my wife in the mood for? I will fetch it.” He’s in one of his sillier moods, the positive effect of uninterrupted sleep. 

Jemma’s tried not to worry but it’s impossible not to when it comes to Fitz. She knows he’s doing everything he’s supposed to. He’s been taking all his medications and calling his therapist and doing the exercises May recommended to clear his head. He talks to her when things get bad for him, but now, with Maggie here, Jemma’s old fears that he’d holding back for fear of scaring her away have reared their ugly heads. 

“Well, husband, since you asked so gallantly, I would like something delicious. And a cup of tea. Please and thank you.”

Fitz’s brow furrows. “Something delicious? That’s all I’ve got to go on here?” He sounds more himself than he has in years, back before they left their lab for the chance at adventure.

“And the tea.” Jemma giggles sleepily, smiling to herself as Fitz leaves, still mumbling under his breath as he goes though his smile doesn’t fade. 

-

“Lookie here Magpie, lookie what Aunt Daisy brought you.” 

Daisy holds up a metallic looking sphere, its exterior made up of different close knit panels. Daisy hits a side and it glows, emitting a sound. “Mack thought of it.” Daisy says, looking up from Maggie, “It’s all types of sensory stuff which is apparently super good for baby brains.” Daisy turns it over in her hands, taps another side and glows a different color, the surface of the panel rippling, lifting and falling like a Wakandan sand table. The engineer in Fitz is already itching to examine the toy for himself, see what exactly it is Mack did to make it function. That’s just as well since Maggie seems more interested in gumming on her fist than reaching for the toy Daisy holds overhead. Fitz scans the kitchen counter for her pacifier. They keep forgetting to get one of those clippy bits to secure her pacifier to her onesie. Fitz adds it to his mental shopping list for the hundredth time. 

Daisy demonstrates one more panel but Maggie just swaps her drool soaked fist for the dry one. Daisy frowns, put out. “Way to let a girl down hard, Magpie.” She says, setting the toy down on the kitchen counter besides Maggie’s chair.

“It’s okay,” Fitz says, finally locating a clean pacifier in the dishwasher. “Jemma says she’ll be more interested in toys in a few months. Right now she’s still developing basic cognitive--” Maggie resists his initial efforts to replace her fist with the pacifier but she ultimately relents though she immediately spits it out and starts wailing. 

“Holy crap.” Daisy whispers, wincing as Maggie cries. Her whole face scrunches up and goes red, her arms curling against her chest, her legs kicking unhappily, causing her chair to bounce. “Are we sure she’s not one of us?” 

(“Who knows what sort of side effects intergalactic, interdimensional, and flat-out time travel might have on our genetic material.” Jemma frets, pacing the small, brightly lit confines of the doctor’s office. “Not to mention your 74 year long nap.” Fitz runs a slightly shaking hand through his hair. “Well forgive me for cyrogentically freezing myself in order to travel through time to save you lot--” “Oh Fitz you know that’s not what I meant--it’s just, by all rights I shouldn’t even be able to conceive. You remember what the doctor said when--” She falls silent, pales at the memory of what had happened at the Lighthouse. )

“Ha, ha.” Fitz says, reaching for the rejected pacifier and trying again. If anything Maggie starts crying harder. “Sorry, Monkey, I’m sorry. You know how your mum gets about pruney hands and germs and antibodies. Me I’m all for you sucking on your hand as long as you like, but Mum’s a real tough nut about these types of things, you’ll see.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, reaching out and massaging one of Maggie’s feet. “Way to throw Jemma under the bus, Fitz.”

The words cut through the room like a dendrotoxin bullet, freezes both of them in place. Only Maggie carries on, crying to her heart’s content. Daisy’s dark eyes hone in on his face, refuse to drop even as Fitz stares back at her like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of it own rapidly approaching death. 

It wasn’t so long ago at all that standing in a room alone with Daisy was its own kind of punishment. Mending their relationship took longer and required more courage and strength on both their parts than knitting together a hole in the universe or keeping the plates of the earth from blowing apart. Even now there are still moments like these when the spiderweb thin cracks that separate them still feel all too prominent. 

They’re both capable of unforgivable things. There’s no hiding that from one another. 

It’s part of what made retirement an easy decision for Jemma and Fitz. Their past was so full of regrets and wrongdoings, against themselves and each other and the people they care about most. When the time came they both knew they wouldn’t survive together if they didn’t make the choice to put recovery first for once. Finding out about Maggie just made committing to their decision easier and now that she’s here, a living breathing wonder on their kitchen counter, crying about something as simple as the inability to eat her own hand, Fitz is reminded of every good reason there ever was to save the world and walk away from the work simultaneously. 

Fitz clears his throat, gives the pacifier another try. This time Maggie latches on, pries it from Fitz’s fingers and sucks on it noisily, staring tearfully at Fitz like she wants him to know that she thinks it an inadequate replacement at best. He looks at Daisy, another apology lodged in his throat. But there’s no apology he can give that she’ll accept, no apology she should accept for what he did to her that day. They’re both still learning to live with that. 

Daisy’s still holding onto one of Maggie’s miniscule feet, thumb pressed against the arch of her foot. 

Fitz concentrates on the Maggie’s face, her dripping nose and red eyes, the wispy brown hair that covers her head, curls on the sides of her protruding ears. Her tiny spit-drenched hand grabs hold of his finger and squeezes hard. 

“I’m glad you guys get to have this.” Daisy says, voice low. “You and Jemma deserve to be happy, Fitz. I mean that.” She gives Fitz a weak but genuine smile, as incredible in his eyes as she was when she was a lone hacker working out of the back of a van instead of the director of an intelligence organization. 

“I wish--” Fitz mumbles, not trying to extract his finger from Maggie’s hold. “You--you made it possible, Daisy. You saved the world.”

Daisy flushes pink, ducks her head, stares down at Maggie’s foot. “That was a team effort Magpie. Don’t let your old man tell you any different.”

“We were a good team.” Fitz adds, somewhat distracted. They had been. Unstoppable even when it seemed like every single odd was against them. How many times did you betray them? comes the traitorous thought and Fitz’s stomach clenches. They’d been more than a team. Hadn’t he told Ward that once, a lifetime ago? They’d been a family.

Daisy rubs Maggie’s heel until she kicks free of the touch. “Yeah, we were pretty good.” 

Maggie peers at them both, chewing happily on her pacifier as the redness fades from her face. Daisy pinches her toes. “See, even Magpie agrees.”

-

Jemma likes nighttime feedings the best. 

Fitz moved the rocker from the nursery into their room for Jemma to sit in when she gets up to feed Maggie during the night, and Jemma likes to sit in it and look out the bedroom window at the quiet sleeping world outside. Jemma likes sitting with Maggie in her arms, held close and safe, listening to the rhythmic sucking noises she makes as she eats her fill, familiarizes herself with the singular gentle pulling sensation that accompanies it.

The world feels small in those moments, condensed to just her and Maggie. 

Some nights Fitz stays up despite Jemma’s assurances he should go back to sleep. Those nights Jemma sits in bed, propped up in the small mountain of pillows Fitz arranges for her, Fitz watching as Maggie eats. “Does it hurt?” Fitz asks sleepily, leaning carefully against Jemma’s side. 

“Not really.” Jemma says, touching Maggie’s cheek, wiping at a dribble of milk that bubbles out at the side of her mouth. “Sometimes when she latches she bites a little too hard while she’s getting herself into position but this part, it doesn’t hurt at all. My nipples are getting a sore though.” 

Fitz makes a contemplative noise. “Maybe you could pump and take a break, yeah? That way you could sleep through the night and I could take care of feeding her when she’s hungry.” 

“Maybe.” Jemma answers, considering, yet already missing the extra time she gets to spend with Maggie. 

“I can’t help thinking though--” she bites her lip. She doesn’t want to say it, almost as though keeping silent will keep the words from being true. “I can’t help thinking about how quickly she’ll grow up. She’s only three months old and yet, I can’t stop thinking about how one day she’ll be--” _She’ll be someone’s mum one day and then she’ll be—_ , Jemma doesn’t say, but she feels it pressing up against the backs of her ribs as firmly as she feels her beating heart. 

“Yeah,” Fitz breathes, pressing just a little closer. “I know what you mean.”

“I try not to.” Jemma goes on, “Obviously I love her apart from all that. Because she’s our daughter and perfection just as she is already.” She smiles, traces the shell of Maggie’s tiny ear. “And obviously there won’t be a future like the one we saw. It’s all different now. And there’s no knowing that she’s even--that she would have been his mother, that might have been--” Jemma swallows, voice still remarkably calm despite the gnarled thread of emotion the conversation is tugging on. “She’ll have a completely different life, and so will we, make completely different choices. But I look at her sometimes and I think about all the terrible things I couldn’t protect her from and how alone she must have felt sometimes without her mum and I just want to spend as much time as I can with her. And that’s how all mums must feel but I just--I love her so much Fitz. I never knew I could love anyone as much I love you but I love her just the same. I can’t believe my body can hold it all together. And people might write it off as hormones but I do.”

Fitz presses a kiss to her shoulder, his face damp when it brushes over her bare shoulder. “I do know, Jem. I think about it all the time. I try not to--the doctor says it’s catastrophizing. But I can’t help it sometimes. I just know I have to keep you both safe.” Jemma closes her eyes, rests her head against the top of Fitz’s unruly hair. “We’ll keep you safe as well, Fitz. It has to be a team effort or it won’t work. You know that.”

They lapse into silence while Jemma switches Maggie over to her other breast, the infant happily oblivious to the fact that her parents are a mess of long undealt with emotional trauma. 

“I don’t want to mess this up.” Fitz admits and Jemma nods, tightening her hold on Maggie just a fraction more. 

No parent does. But life is full of mistakes. It’s what you do after that matters most sometimes. “I think we’re going to.” Jemma says mildly, drowsy all over and yet as clearheaded as ever. “But I know we’ll survive it. All of us. Because we’re going to take care of each other Fitz. For the rest of our lives.” Because that’s what families do.

“Yeah,” Fitz agrees, calmer now. “Yeah of course we will.”

As scared as she feels sometimes, as overwhelmed as she still is by a future that’ll never happen, sitting there, just Maggie and Fitz and Jemma, the world feels small.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Never Quite Free by the Mountain Goats


End file.
